On 5th Feb UCA signed an MOU with Puliida to offer legal information and training to Cooperatives under UCA. This comes after Cooperatives were facing a mile stone of challenges with the Law and on several occasions lost cases in court due to luck of enough knowledge on laws for Cooperatives.

Speaking at the signing ceremony at the UCA office in Kampala, the General Secretary Ivan Asiimwe said that Cooperatives have been complaining about continuously losing court cases, mainly because Cooperatives have not been receiving the right and ample legal information hence the need to contract Puliida that will be in position to help the cooperators in understanding the legal information on Cooperatives.
Puliida is a Not for Profit company incorporated under the laws of Uganda whose core objective is to offer transactional legal assistance and training to cooperatives, farmer groups, agribusinesses and social entrepreneurs. Given its background and expertise in the field of farmers and Coops UCA saw it was well positioned to train and provide legal information to Coops.

(on the left) General Secretary UCA shakes hand with Moses Mugisha from Puliida after the signing the MOU

“The purpose of this MOU is to help cooperators with legal information and Capacity building and research for them to be able to walk the right legal path,” Asiimwe said.
Moses Mugisha, the Executive Director Puliida Uganda, said that the reason cooperatives have been having issues with court cases is because they have not been following the proper legal procedures in procuring contracts hence the lawyers once in court would find themselves with little evidence and knowledge on the functionality of Coops.

“This is what we are going to help them with. We are going to make sure the Cooperatives have the guidance to do proper documentation before they enter into any transaction,” Mugisha said.

He added that some of the lawyers that have been representing cooperators, although they have the experience and the right legal training lack the element of understanding of how cooperatives operate hence the need for training.“Our job will be to train UCA members and willing lawyers who are going to offer litigation services to cooperators so that they understand what is needed in court for cooperative issues,” he added. However it was clear that Puliida will not offer litigation or legal advice to cooperators.